Friday, January 19, 2007

Not sure why they need another committee. Frankly, I think there are far too many as it is.

And, their choice of chairman is not surprising. Another proud knee-jerker from the People's Republic of Massachusetts.

Representative Edward J. Markey of Malden is in the middle of a high-profile battle between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and some of the chamber's most powerful committee chairmen, with Pelosi turning to Markey to head a newly created committee on climate change that will focus on curbing the production of greenhouse gases.

The creation of a special committee to confront global warming signals a desire by Pelosi to control greenhouse gases by imposing tougher regulations on auto emissions and on industries that deplete the ozone. The move follows six years in which President Bush and the Republican-led Congress did little to address global warming.

Fascinating. Especially with the yelping about the Administrations abuse of scientific data. Funny that they would choose someone who seems to have the same problem, just bent in the opposite direction.

Dingell had announced hearings on global warming before Pelosi moved to create the new committee, though environmentalists regard him with deep skepticism because of his ties to the auto industry. His wife, Deborah, is a top lobbyist for General Motors.

"The chairman has for many years been strongly opposed to increases in [fuel-economy] standards, though there is pretty clearly a majority in the Democratic caucus who favor higher standards," said Philip E. Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust.

Clapp called it a "gutsy move" by Pelosi to try to overcome the "balkanized" committee process by putting Markey in charge of shepherding a vital policy area.

If there was an issue with Dingell's integrity on being fair in hearings, why was he given a chairmanship? Well, I suppose you could look at it as Pelosi fixing the problem, by adding another redundant committee to further confuse the matter.

In a nod to Dingell and other committee chairman, Pelosi agreed that the new committee would not have the power to draft legislation, and instead gave it purely oversight and investigatory functions. That means any concepts Markey and his colleagues want to pursue as bills must navigate the regular House committees, including, in some cases, Dingell's.

Can't draft legislation? Then why bother? And if they find something in their oversight, which committee will be doing the legislation? Dingells?

A leading climatologist on the Weather Channel in the United States has caused a squall in the industry by arguing that any weather forecaster who dares publicly to question the notion that global warming is a manmade phenomenon should be stripped of their professional certification.

The call was made by Heidi Cullen, host of a weekly global warming programme on the cable network called The Climate Code, and coincides with a stretch of severely off-kilter weather across the US this winter and moves by Democrats to draft strict new legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Specifically, Ms Cullen is suggesting that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revokes the "seal of approval" that it normally extends to broadcast forecasters in the US in cases where they have expressed scepticism about man's role in pushing up planetary temperatures.

"It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather," she wrote in her internet blog. "It's not a political statement... it's just an incorrect statement."

Ms Cullen is not alone in trying to marginalise doubters, who mostly argue that recent rises in temperatures are caused by normal cyclical weather patterns. They were described as "global warming deniers" by former vice-president Al Gore in his recent film An Inconvenient Truth.

Nice to see that the intolerance to opposing theory is reaching a crescendo. Think Ms. Cullen would have condemned Galileo? I do. This level of intolerance is foolish in the extreme. No one is forcing you to believe their theory, but unless you can scientifically destroy that theory, you should have no say at all on their accreditation. Seeing that the loony left has closed their minds to any alternative theory, looks like they have nothing to say on the President's poor activities with regard to scientific information.